


The Gift

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [178]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Dana Scully's year-long Pregnancy, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Light Angst, MSR, Missing Scene, Mulder's stupid brain disease thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 04:06:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12335154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: Three in-between moments from The Gift, from three different perspectives.





	1. Doggett

She leaves early on Friday afternoon for an appointment, telling him she won’t be back afterward and that she’ll see him on Monday. In theory, he could duck out early, too; they wrapped up the final report on their most recent case this morning, and nothing new has come in since. However, he decides instead to redouble his efforts with regard to honoring the promise he made so many months ago.

He swore to her he’d find Mulder.

In truth, part of him has always hoped Mulder would come to his senses and return on his own. He would honestly like to believe Mulder is the stand-up guy Scully thinks he is. The more time that’s passed, though, the less it’s looking like there’s any real hope of him coming back voluntarily.

To be fair, maybe he can’t. Maybe he’s gotten so sick with whatever’s wrong with his brain that he’s in a hospital somewhere. Hell, he probably wasn't in his right mind when he ran off, either.

Still, benefit of the doubt isn't going to help Doggett find him. He's going to have to dig back into the paper trail he tried to follow, back when Mulder first went missing. There's got to be something there, some dots he just didn’t manage to connect, before. 

He decides to start with the cell phone records.


	2. Skinner

_“Something happened here. It just wasn’t what we thought.”_

Skinner spends most of the drive back to DC debating whether to tell her.

On the one hand, she has a right to know. Whatever the circumstances of Mulder’s actual disappearance, there is no doubt he also went to Squamash last May. Skinner hasn’t wanted to believe Mulder kept an undiagnosed brain disease hidden from everyone (especially Scully), but it is becoming harder to deny. Any pieces he can put together on that front, he has an obligation to pass along.

On the other hand, this information will no doubt cause her pain. She already has more than enough to deal with, just with her pregnancy alone, never mind the fact that they’re no closer to finding Mulder than they were months ago. How will it actually help anything to dig more deeply into the ways he deceived them?

In the end, he decides it’s not his place to shield her from this, however painful it might be. It’s also worth giving her fair warning in case Doggett decides to go to OPR about the falsified case report after all.

He calls her apartment from his cell just as he’s getting back into the city. “Agent Scully, it’s Walter Skinner. I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but there’s something we need to discuss, and I don’t think it should wait.”

“Sir? Have you found something?”

He winces at the carefully-restrained hope in her voice. “Nothing new, unfortunately. And nothing we should discuss over the phone. Do you mind if I stop by for a few minutes?”

“Uh… no, that’s… that’s fine. I’ll be here for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there shortly.”


	3. Scully

She tries not to pace as she waits for him to arrive. She mostly fails.

He said “Nothing new,” not “This isn’t about Mulder.” So what on Earth could be important enough that it can’t wait until Monday and can’t be discussed over the phone, yet also qualifies as “nothing new?” 

Fortunately, she doesn’t have to wait long. Not ten minutes after she hung up the phone, there’s a quiet knock at her front door. She forces herself to answer it calmly, checking first to make sure it’s him and not blindly opening the door in a rush.

The tension in his jaw does nothing to set her mind at ease, and after she’s ushered him inside and shut the door, she can’t seem to figure out what to do with her hands, clasping them in front of herself, making fists at her sides, anything to keep them from shaking.

“Dana, there’s no easy way to say this.” His mouth barely moves as he speaks, like he’s fighting to keep the words inside just a little longer. Her heart is in her throat. “I have reason to believe Mulder really was suffering from an illness last year that he kept hidden.”

Okay, _now_ she’s just confused. “Right. But we already knew that. We have the medical records.”

He shakes his head, dismissive. “You know as well as I do that those things can be faked. You can’t tell me you just accepted them, without question, after everything you and Mulder have been through.”

“Of course not, but then I found--” She bites off the rest of the sentence. Mulder’s journal is private, and the last thing she wants is for it to be turned into just another piece of evidence.

“What did you find?”

She turns the question back on him. “Why don’t you tell me what you found, first? What’s convinced _you_ that the records are genuine?”

He sighs, then nods toward her kitchen table. “Do you mind if we sit?”

She can’t help feeling a little disappointed as they pull out chairs and sit down. Whatever Skinner’s found, she can’t imagine how it will help them bring Mulder home or how it’s worthy of the urgency. Still, alongside the disappointment is a small sense of relief. At least they’re not closing his case entirely, the Bureau officially giving up on him.

“Early last May,” Skinner starts, looking down at his hands folded on the table, “Mulder took an unreported trip to a place called Squamash, Pennsylvania. Agent Doggett found cell phone records indicating he was there at the same time he filed a report saying he was working a case here.”

She nods, resigned. It was only a matter of time before Doggett put those pieces together. “Yes, sir.”

His eyes widen. “You knew about this?”

“Only after the fact. I found out… shortly after he went missing.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it because…?”

_Because I couldn’t cope with what it meant. Because it was too raw at first, and then it just didn’t matter, later._

“Because it wasn’t relevant,” she says instead.

“I don’t know if I’ve misstated the seriousness, here. I swore to Doggett that you didn’t… that you couldn’t... Scully, your signature is on a falsified report.”

She blinks. “Excuse me?”

“Your signature is on the case file claiming Mulder was here when he was actually in Pennsylvania.”

“Sir, did you read the report? We were performing alternating surveillance. Mulder went to Pennsylvania _during my shift_. Nothing was falsified.” She shakes her head. “I suppose in retrospect he was barely on that case, but if you'll recall, you were the one who pulled him off it and sent him to Vermont. If you want to talk about being in two places at once… Even so, he still consulted with me over the phone, so there wasn't anything untoward about including his signature on the final report.”

He nods, slowly. “Okay, I remember that case. That explains the apparent discrepancy. You’re in the clear.” He looks relieved, and she's not sure whether to be offended that he thought her capable of forging official documents in some sort of cover-up. “And you didn't know he was going to Squamash at the time?”

“No, sir. Like I said, I only found out about it after… after I got back from Arizona in early June.”

“And you know why he went?”

She sighs and looks down at the table, nodding. “Yes, I do.”

“How?”

_Does it matter? Please don’t make me give up this last piece of him that I have._

There’s a flutter in her belly, and she realizes that the journal isn’t the _very_ last piece of him she has. Somehow, the thought gives her strength even as it makes her indescribably sad to think of the possibility that Mulder might never return to see what they made together. 

“He left a note, explaining. In case he didn’t come back. I found it in his apartment after he went missing.”

“I don’t understand. If you’ve known about this since June, why didn’t you follow up on it? Isn’t it possible that Mulder found something else like this, somewhere? That maybe Doggett’s right, and I only thought I saw--”

“No, sir.” She looks up, frowning. “You watched Mulder be abducted. He may have been sick, but he didn’t fake his disappearance. Agent Doggett is wrong about that.”

“But how can you be certain?”

Heaving another sigh, she pushes back from the table and stands. “Excuse me a minute.”

She goes into her bedroom and opens the drawer of her nightstand, lower lip pinched between her teeth as she extracts the notebook. She holds it for a moment, running her thumbs back and forth on the cover, then flips it open to the final entry. Going back out into the kitchen, she holds the book to her chest.

“Mulder kept a journal, detailing some of what he went through in trying to diagnose and treat the problem in his brain. I haven’t shared it because--” Her voice cracks, and she swallows. “--because it’s personal. Because he left it for me, and while it confirms that he was in fact sick, it doesn’t change anything about how or why he’s missing.” She sets the journal, still open to the last page, down in front of Skinner. “This is the last thing he wrote. I have no reason to doubt that it’s the truth.”

She watches his eyes skip over the words, his brow furrowed in concentration. When he finishes and looks up at her, she rushes to get her question out before he can ask one of his own.

“Sir, is there any way we can keep this off the record? If Agent Doggett gets ahold of this notebook… There are things in here that are none of his business. And they won’t do anything to help us find Mulder. Please.”

He rubs his eyes underneath his glasses, then pinches the bridge of his nose. Scully finds herself involuntarily holding her breath.

“I’ll do what I can,” he says at last, and she sighs out, nodding.

“Thank you.”

“I can’t promise anything. You know that. If I order Agent Doggett outright to stop investigating this Squamash connection, the only thing it will do is arouse his suspicion. However, there’s a chance I can convince him to leave it alone. At the very least, to keep from dragging you into it.”

It’s not as much as she hoped for, but better than she feared. “I appreciate that, sir.”

After he leaves, she tucks the journal back away in her drawer, trying to find renewed comfort in Mulder’s confidence that he would eventually return. It’s getting harder to keep hoping, and she hates herself a little bit for thinking it might be easier -- or at least smarter -- to start truly accepting the possibility that she will have to raise their child alone. Whether that’s because he never comes back, or because the damage in his brain is so great that he won’t survive even if he _does_ come back, there’s a definite temptation to start preparing herself for that potential future. To stop living in limbo.

She hates herself for thinking it because she knows that if the situation were reversed, Mulder would never give up hope. No matter how ill-advised, or statistically improbable, he would never stop searching, never stop waiting. Doesn’t she owe him that much? Even when it’s hard, even when it hurts, how can she contemplate even starting to give up hope, just for the sake of protecting her own heart?

At the same time, what does she owe their child? She can’t afford to let herself lose sight of the fact that it’s not just about her and Mulder, anymore.

“Please just tell me what to do,” she whispers, though whether to Mulder or God or her own heart, she couldn’t say.

The only answer is another flutter low in her belly, her mental Mulder uncharacteristically silent, and she closes her eyes, placing a hand below her navel. She stands there for a long time, just breathing.


End file.
